R.L.'s Houseboat On the Styx

12:10am: INTRO -- SCROLL DOWN TO CURRENT ENTRIES
This blog is mostly about fiction techiques, terms from how-to-write books, etc. (Constructive debate is welcome, but anti-geeky stuff may be moved to the basement.)

The "Great Chain of Reading" that Gergely Nagy discusses

( MISC WRITING GEEKY LINKS )

1:50pm: OT USA
Will someone please give the guy a blow job, so we can impeach him?

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Sorry, saw this bumper sticker, can't resist.

1:16pm: why I love Ozarque's blog!
http://ozarque.livejournal.com/471118.html

5:10am: Is anyone else as good as Elizabeth Goudge?
Especially her children's books, THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE and LINNETS AND VALERIANS?

Well, probably no one could be as good in all the same ways. But in language, reading level, choice of words, how much detail per how much action....

1:28am: rasfc conflict
I'm posting about the recent rasfc conflict, friends-locked, to a custom friends list of rasfc people. What's up currently is an open letter to Z.

3:40am: Now if I just got extra points for...
... copying and pasting instead of giving them my LJ password....

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics)
You scored as a Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

That's probably the one I'd choose. But I'm not as confident as they think (or maybe it's relative, I just have even less confidence in any Establishment knowing any better, either).

( Read more... )

8:42pm: fairy tale contest Jan 1 - March 31
From
http://www.catscuriouspress.com/guidelines.aspx

Story length must be between 5000 and 10,000 words
Stories must be single POV, from the protagonist's point of view
Stories must be humorous
Stories must appeal to a broad range of folks -- from twelve years old to adult (so no raunchy humor, please!)
Submission period: January 1st, 2008 to midnight March 31st, 2008

Any fairy tale is fair game!

The payment? $.05 per word (up to $500 maximum) and seeing your name next to Jim C. Hines'!

9:06pm: Opening sentences and theme
Shallana just posted about opening sentences and whether they need to predict the theme of the book, and asked for samples, and I posted:

Sample, not mine:

It was a slow Sunday afternoon, the kind [Walden] loved. He stood at an open window and looked across the park. The broad, level lawn was dotted with mature trees: a Scotch pine, a pair of mighty oaks [....]

That goes on with more such description and scene setting with seven WAS/WERE's and innumberable 'hads'.

This is from Ken Follett's THE MAN FROM ST. PETERSBURG, copyright 1982. Follett's book was used as an example in a how-to by his agent in 1994: "Writing the Blockbuster Novel [....] ( Read more... )

8:02am: Ransome's WE DIDN'T MEAN TO GO TO SEA
I love most of Ransome's Swallows & Amazons series, but I'd recommend skipping chapters IX through XII of this one. Overall the book is scarcely worth reading, except that curiously it has the same motif as the movie THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE: kids on an involuntary adventure obsessing about a promise to their mother. In this case the promise was not to go sailing outside the harbor -- even when they've been carried into dangerous territory and the only safe thing is to sail on. As for chapters IX-XII, they read like bad fan-fic trashing the characters, especially Susan.

9:34am: Zornhau And Cqabn in Oz
Well, not really, not quite. But this passage in OZMA OF OZ sort of reminded me of Zornhau's synopsis/outline method.
( Read more... )

7:01am: 20 strikes before a story is out....
Jay Lake and Paul Jessup are talking at http://jaylake.livejournal.com/1179595.html?view=7365067 about how many times to submit a story before giving up on it, at least 20, maybe more....

5:19pm: Jane Austen Hoax cover letter -- nice period style
The cover letter for the Jane Austen hoax is up, delightfully written in the style of a young Jane of former times, with impeccable punctuation slightly too complicated for our dumbed-down era. A little historically eclectic, Anne Shirley might have called it quaint.

Unfortunately it seems to be pdf, but worth the download.

http://www.janeausten.co.uk/regencyworld/pdf/rejecting28.pdf

The hoaxer was giving them a big hint that this is a designed hoax, by someone literate and skillful: thus quite likely to make its way to the Press.... Plus having the return address of the actual Jane Austen center in Bath, if anyone had had a breath of suspicion, and the wit to check....

Too bad he posted it in pdf instead of html; too many people will rely on second-hand descriptions instead of reading it for themselves, and talk as thought he didn't intend to break most of the rules in "How to Write Cover Letters."

(Edited Tuesday night)

3:04pm: LWW -- movie:book::tight-third:omni
LWW -- movie:book::tight-third:omni

Re Rilstone's review of the movie LION, WITCH, AND WARDROBE at
http://andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/2006/01/lion-witch-and-wardrobe_08.html
( Read more... )

5:03am: ROTFL without spoiler
http://lnhammer.livejournal.com/74128.html?thread=760464#t760464

8:21pm: Synonyms for 'said' in Oz
Okay, quick and dirty, from the first Oz book I could download in plain text: THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ

ETA: I cut the Pumpkinhead stuff, and explained why at the bottom of the post, and added links to Baum's original chapter and book.

( Read more... )

5:29am: JRK, Baum, Tarzan, adverbs -- Shallana?
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:uvmHS-AE2VEJ:blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/07/harry_potters_big_con_is_the_p.html+Rowling+adverb&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=opera
Here, from page 324 of The Order of the Phoenix, to give you a typical example, are six consecutive descriptions of the way people speak. "...said Snape maliciously," "... said Harry furiously", " ... he said glumly", "... said Hermione severely", "... said Ron indignantly", " ... said Hermione loftily". Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

Well, yes, you do. And define a few terms. It's an unfashionable style, but I wonder whether her books are succeeding in spite of it, or (partly) because of it. (Otoh, see below....)

A while back someone (Shallana?) said a very sensible thing about the style of 100 years ago,
( Read more... )

3:27am: JKR: "nothing for [the reader] to do"
From http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:BV4UhI-CquMJ:www.jacketflap.com/megablog/index.asp%3Fblogid%3D715+Rowling+Baum+adverbs&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us&client=opera
[Roger Sutton:]
"And after two- or three-and-a-half (can’t remember just where I gave up) Harry Potters, I realized I was simply Not There. Rowling writes (or wrote, anyway, in those three books) in a way that made me feel pushed out. Not unwelcome, but unnecessary. Every scene, character, action, motive, and joke was described and explained, frequently more than once. There was nothing for me to do."

[Someone else:]
my own experience with them has been quite the opposite from Roger’s. That is, far from feeling pushed out, I feel I’m very much in them — mucking about as I pick up this clue and consider it, wonder about that person, about the prophesy, about Voldemort, about how Rowling will end it, and so on. [....] I’ve long railed about those darn adverbs (and I think ever since people started pointing them out Rowling has put even more in to get back at them/us:)

One explanation for the different reactions might be, that Sutton wants something to "do" in the interpreting of each sentence or passage, to consciously add some creative energy of his own to the words. Maybe he wants to consciously "half perceive and half create." -- But the other commentator prefers the sentences and passages to be self-explanatory, or explained by the characters, so the reader's attention is free to deal directly with the clues, the prophecy, etc.

3:33am: paragraph shape and white space as 'map of intent'
In Stephen King's /On Writing/, there's a little tech stuff, mostly
obvious but sound -- and one bit I really like.

Around p. 132 he has some very good stuff to say about paragraph breaks,
characters' gestures as rhythm pauses, etc. On pp. 129-130 he begins by
talking about the "blocks of white space where paragraphs begin or leave
off. .... Paragraphs are almost as important for how they look as for what
they say; they are maps of intent." He takes this up again with a very good
example on pp. 132-134. He quotes a gesture paragraph which serves to break
a long quote and show a change of subject.

All this is from an old post I made in answer to someone's question about iirc inserting gestures into conversation to show emotion.

( Read more... )

9:58pm: Live-blogging HP7
Elsehwere some people are talking about live-blogging HP7.

WEll, mine will be sporadic, as I need to go to town with someone soon. So far I like the first few pages. :-)

( Read more... )

7:12pm: Vague but suggestive HP spoiler behind the cut
I haven't read all of 1-6 yet, so it will be a while before I get to HP7. But I'm like C. S. Lewis said in EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM, I want the suspense out of the way so I can enjoy the book. So I read Wikipedia's spoiler page, which was plenty long and exciting.

( Read more... )

12:10am: invitation from swfa to non-members
From
http://community.livejournal.com/sfwa/29027.html?mode=reply&style=mine
Everyone is
invited here to share ideas, news, sightings of new concepts in
publishing, new ways for authors to reach their audiences and/or
make money. The more we collect this information the more it
helps everyone, so please help us out. Thanks! --Andrew Burt,
SFWA VP]
The group is open to all, SFWA members and non-members. So come on over, share what you know, and spread the word to others.

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.sfwa.skunkworks

6:33am: Jane Austen and The Evil Slushpile Overlord...
My account doesn't do polls, but let's try anyway.

If you were the Evil Slushpile Overlord, and got a submission transparently cloned from Jane Austen, how would you respond? Assuming you wanted to avoid possible ridicule by the BBC and the Guardian.

1. Take it seriously and denounce the sender for plagarism.
2. Send the standard form rejection.
3. Say something like...
3a - "My regards to Jane."
3b - "Sorry, we only deal with living authors."
3c - "Try Project Gutenberg."
3d - "We appreciate your submission, Ms. Austen, but the copyright on this work has expired."
3e - "Are you sure you're up to a live speaking tour?"

Yours?

9:00am: John Fletcher. 1633. The Tamer Tam'd.
John Fletcher. 1633. The Tamer Tam'd.

A wildly successful "sequel" to Shakespeare's Shrew in which the women and right-thinking men of Padua rise up against Petruchio. I am not making this up. It's a play, very little known nowadays, because it contradicts what the dominant culture would like us to believe about women in history.

(from Veronica Schanoes at Sur la Lune)

6:04am: yoga for writing?
Jeff Davis, chapters one through four of The Journey from the Center to the Page (Penguin) (out of print until April 2008 but used copies are available) and Nicholson Baker, A Box of Matches (novella).

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought /(Basic Books)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (Trans. Colin Smith, Routledge & Kegan Paul)

5:05pm: Interesting post at a blog perhaps worth exploring. This one is about the difference between fantasy and, er, non-fantasy. It's sort of like my 'Magic can be alignment-specific', but really much more.

http://chestertonianrambler.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-is-fantasy-and-where-did-it-come.html